Famous in love by Rebecca Serle

PROLOGUE

Listen.
  I'll tell you what's it's like to be with him. How he kisses me. How he touches my cheek. I'll tell you what he whispers to me before we go out and meet those screaming crowds. How he holds my pinkie, just slightly, so the cameras won't catch us touching. I'll tell you out sigoals. How blinking once means it's okay; I'm here, and how blinking twice means don't answer that. I'll tell you everthing, but you have to promise never to write it down or repeat it. You have to promise it will be our secret.
    Sometimes, during an interview, I'm caught with this intense desire to tell the truth. We'll be right there in the middle of talking about my favorite brand of jeans or something, and I'll want to slip out of my chair onto the floor, sit cross-legged, and just spill. It's my nature. I've always been someone who's quick to trust. I told Holly Anderson freshman year that my sister was pregant, and by lunchtime the entire class knew. I don't know why I expected her to keep that secret from me, since we weren't even friends, but something inside me was compelled to let her in. I like to let people in. Which is why it's so ridiculous that it's the one thing I absolutely, positively cannot do anymore. These questions have already been answered. The publicist stands by with a clipboard, toeing the minute hand is a slow toddler she's trying to hurry up.
    "Seven," I say, nodding, because we're working on an endorsement deal with them. I haven't been allowed to wear a single other brand of jeans for the last six months. "I like them, too," the interviewer says. She winks at me, like we're in something together, and I suddenly realize I've forgotten her name. I'm not sure I've ever learned it, actually. The only name that matters is mine.
   We leave and I found the corner, and then he's there, walking toward me. He's flanked on either side by people--Wyatt and Sandy and two girls I don't recognize--But he sees me, and our eyes lock for a moment. I can't touch him. The only thing I want to do is run to him and have him put his arms around me, to take me someplace that isn't here. Someplace it's just the two of us and nome of this matters. But I can't do that because no one knows. Not Wyatt and not Sandy, not even Cassandra. They think we're just friends-- that I belong to someone else. They don't know that I've made a huge mistake. They don't know that, like August, I chose wrong.